


you're so cute, bet you really wanna be a star

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/F, Genderbending, Growing Up Together, Mutual Pining, Nail Polish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-19 18:32:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17006937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: The older they get, the more Tooru feels like she just wants… to be good enough to have her attention, or something. She wants her eyes on her, and she wants her to like what she sees. She wants to wear the nail polish Hajime picks out for her and she wants Hajime to look at her lips like she wants to kiss them.She just wants. Something that’s just out of her grasp. Something that she doesn’t know if she’s allowed to have. Sometimes, when Hajime looks at her lips or tucks Tooru’s hair behind her ear for her or laces their fingers together in that pretty tan-red-white contrast, Tooru thinks that maybe Hajime might want it, too.





	you're so cute, bet you really wanna be a star

**Author's Note:**

> my brain, banging on pots and pans while i should be working on my thesis: iwaoi but as girls! iwaoi but as girls!
> 
> anyway, i was interested in how a change in gender wld affect different relationships, esp with iwa and w tooru's self-image/self-perception as well. as a wlw myself it was interesting to channel some of my own feelings & experiences too.

 

Her nails are chipping. Turquoise and white, alternating one after the other. It’s not technically dress code, but they are the school colors — whenever a teacher would remind her of the former, she would mention the latter, and smile, and say it was a club thing, if that was okay? Most of them left her alone, because she’s a good student and a good player and non-dress code nails is one of the least harmful things she could do. Hajime always says she’s too much of a kiss-ass, but Oikawa Tooru would just call it using the system to her own advantage.

But anyway, they’re chipping. She had painted them carefully the night before their first practice match of the season, and then added a second coat and a top coat, just to make sure they’d last at least a little bit. Two and a half weeks later and they’re finally chipping. She gave herself a real bad paper cut doing her math homework a few nights ago, too; the band-aid stands out against the turquoise of her pointer finger.

It’s kind of ugly, she thinks vaguely. Maybe she should try a different color. Or a different band-aid.

She thinks about the different colors of nail polish she has at home instead of listening to her math teacher talk about math, because her head’s just not in it today. She hates math, anyways, never been very good at it. She does like science, even though it involves math, but that’s not till fifth period, and the day’s barely started. God must hate her, giving her math second period instead of science.

When she runs out of colors to run through and decide against, she thinks about the practice match tomorrow, instead. It sucks that her team colors are chipping before she can even have the chance to show them off again, but she supposes it can’t be helped. She’ll just have to kill it with her jump serve instead. She’s been working very hard, and it’s paid off; her jump serve is very good. She kind of wishes she was practicing her jump serve right now instead of sitting in math class. She also wishes Iwaizumi was in her class so she could ask her opinion on her nail problem. But she’s not, so she has to sit there, all class, not taking in a thing.

“Hey, Iwa-chan,” she says in the locker room, when classes are finally out, halfway through unbuttoning her shirt, “You wanna stop at the corner shop with me on the way home?”

“Do I _want_ to?” Iwaizumi repeats, because it’s always _Iwaizumi_ at school.

“Will you?” Tooru changes her question. “I need new nail polish.”

“You already have tons of nail polish.”

“Yeah, but I want something new.”

They have this conversation every time Tooru wants a new color, or new earrings, or a new jacket. The only thing Hajime supports replacing regularly is shoes — specifically tennis shoes — and that’s just because she’s a shoe snob.

Still, like every time, Hajime relents.

“Fine,” she says, “But you have to help me with the math homework later.”

Tooru agrees, and doesn’t tell her that she wasn’t paying a single sliver of attention the whole period; she’s sure she can figure it out.

“Don’t forget this, stupid.” Hajime tosses her knee brace to her, and she just barely catches it; she didn’t even see her take it out of the bag.

“I wasn’t gonna!” she insists, but Hajime watches her put it on anyways. People always say she’s like a mom, always making sure everyone’s safe and shit, but Tooru thinks she’d be the scariest mom in the world.

“You’d be the scariest mom in the world, Iwa-chan,” she says.

It’s worth the shirt she gets thrown at her face, because Hajime does laugh.

 

During their first year of high school, Tooru let Hanamaki pierce her cartilage for her. Hanamaki had done it to herself that summer, with ice and a sewing needle, and it hadn’t gotten infected or anything. Tooru hadn’t been able to get a job yet, and her mom wouldn’t give her the money, so she decided to just take what she should get. Her mom didn’t like Hanamaki very much, because she dyed her hair bright pink and pierced her own cartilage, but Tooru was her friend anyways, because they were on the same volleyball team and in the same year, and Tooru liked her pink hair.

“It’s gonna get infected,” Hajime told her.

“Makki said she disinfected the needle like three different ways. Hers didn’t get infected.”

“That doesn’t mean yours won’t.”

“She knows what she’s doing. If it doesn’t work, I can just pop it out.”

“That’s dangerous shit. It’s gonna get infected.”

Tooru put her hands on her hips. “I have perfect confidence in her.”

Hajime had rolled her eyes at her and told her for the third time it wasn’t a good idea, but Tooru did it anyways. She went to Makki’s house after school that Friday — without Hajime, because she said she wasn’t gonna support her dumb bitch decisions — and told her to do her worst.

Makki had numbed her ear with ice, told her to stay still, and then just stuck the sewing needle right through her ear. She could _hear_ the crack of her cartilage as the needle pierced through, and it hadn’t hurt very much but the crunch made her yelp. (That’s what she thought of when she fucked up her knee the next year —she landed wrong and her knee popped and then crunched like her cartilage did, but this time she felt it through her whole goddamn body.)

It did get infected. So she had to take it out, but it _had_ looked cool for a few weeks. When she turned seventeen, Hajime took her to a shop to get it done professionally. She decided to get an industrial piercing instead, and she convinced Hajime to get one, too. Same ears, matching piercings.

Obviously, it didn’t get infected this time.

“This is why you should listen to me when I tell you something’s a bad idea.”

Tooru frowned (pouted, Hajime would probably say); she knew Hajime was right, but didn’t want to admit it. “It was just bad luck. The universe knew I’d be too powerful with _two_ ear piercings.”

“Then how come it let you get an industrial?” Hajime had shot back, unimpressed, but with that little teasing glint in her eye.

Tooru just pouted harder, crossing her arms over her chest. “I guess it just changed its mind.”

Hajime had huffed a laugh, rolled her eyes like she did when Tooru had insisted it would be fine, like she was ridiculous but Hajime couldn’t help but be endeared. Tooru liked feeling endeared to someone, but didn’t like the fact that she usually only saw That Particular Eye-Roll when she’d just made a Particularly Stupid Decision.

Hajime shoved her a little bit, gentler than she usually was, and her hand ended up tangled in Tooru’s own. Tan against white against the dark blue nail polish she was wearing at the time. 

Hajime looked nice that day; her hair was just the right kind of messy, the hair on the side of the industrial tucked behind her ear, and her smile just took Tooru’s fucking breath away. She looked at Hajime, and she remembers wondering if he universe would be willing to let her have this, too

 

After school, they stop at the corner convenience store. It doesn’t have the wide variety of colors they have at the mall, but Tooru decides it’ll have to do; she doesn’t have time to go to the mall today.

“Hey, Iwa-chan,” she says.

“What?” Hajime answers. She’s going through the magazines or something, or maybe looking at the drinks; Tooru’s too focused on her task to look.

“What colors should I get?”

“I dunno.”

She sighs, adjusting her skirt. “You’re zero help, as usual.”

She hears Hajime sigh all rough and put-upon, and then feels her hover behind her, looking over her shoulder at the rack. She almost says something about how hard it must be to stand on her toes for so long, but decides she likes the feeling too much.

“Here,” Hajime says after a moment, pointing at a little bottle on the third shelf; bright, cherry red, “Try this one.”

It’s a more expensive brand — five hundred yen — but she buys it anyways.

 

It’s just she and her mom around the dinner table tonight. Hajime went home after they finished the math homework. She doesn’t much like when it’s just and her mom around the dinner table, cause all they talk about is grades, and futures, and if she has a boyfriend right now. She’s dated a few, mostly boys who were into the whole athlete thing, but none of them lasted very long. Apparently, she’s “too obsessed” with her sport, even though that’s the whole reason they liked her in the first place. Or something. When her first boyfriend broke up with her, Matsun told her it was because she wasn’t putting out — like she was gonna let some boring high school boy stick his dick anywhere. She wasn’t a prude; she just didn’t think that a few dates and a guy being nice equaled her putting out anything.

So no, she’s not seeing anyone at the moment, much to her mom’s displeasure.

So instead, her mom asks if she’s decided where she wants to go to college yet, and what she’s gonna do, as if Tooru hasn’t had a plan since the third year of middle school. To be fair, it’s a pretty simple plan: get a volleyball scholarship, go to Tokyo or somewhere else hardcore, and go pro. It’s not very hard to follow, so she doesn’t get why it’s So Hard for her mom to understand it.

“Are you sure?” She says, as if they haven’t already had this conversation again and again. “It’s not very solid. What if something happens? Remember what happened to your knee?”

Of course she remembers what happened to her knee. She remembers her hands shaking around her phone while she called Hajime at two in the morning, scared out of her fucking mind on the gym floor because she fucked up big and she fucked up bad and she couldn’t move her leg without wanting to cry. Her mom holds it above her head like a medal, like a scar. Like a threat. Of course she remembers.

“Of course I remember,” she says, “But it won’t happen again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I won’t let it happen again.” Like she can will it. People always tell her she acts like she’s more than she is. She always tells them it’s all about confidence, and having some fucking willpower.

“Tooru,” all placating, “I know you love volleyball, but it’s just not… realistic.”

Tooru pushes down the urge to sigh. To scream, to pick at her chipping nails.

“I don’t just love it, I’m good at it—I’m _great_ at it. Coach says there’re already people asking about me.” Which isn’t _exactly_ what Coach said, but it’s close enough. Her mother likes concrete evidence, and potential.

“Tooru—“

“I’m not going into nursing, or business, or whatever else you want me to do. I’m not gonna be a nurse, or a businesswoman, I’m gonna be a pro.”

Her mom sighs, long-suffering, like she’s the one whose future is being attacked. Like she hasn’t been saying Tooru can ‘ _be whatever she wants to be’_ her whole life but is saying she can only be one of two or three all of the sudden.

She thinks about a life of cubicles or whatever the hell nurses’ lives are like. Maybe a life of being someone’s arm candy or trophy wife. She’s probably pretty enough. She thinks about slowly suffocating to death. Maybe she thinks about being her mother, marrying young and raising two kids and being quietly miserable the whole goddamn time.

“I’m doing what I want to do,” she says, pressing her nails hard into the palms of her hands under the table so she doesn’t raise her voice; nice girls don’t raise their fucking voices. “You don’t have to worry about money; I’ll get a scholarship. Probably full ride.”

It’s the best her mom is gonna get from her, and her mom knows it. Tooru feels her eyes on her the whole way up the stairs.

When she first told her mom that she was gonna be a volleyball player and play on TV, her mom had said something along the lines of _it’s gonna be hard to get people to take you seriously._

She was right, of course, but it’s like that for everything a girl does. Be nice but not too nice, or people will walk all over you. Don’t be mean or people will think you’re a bitch.

There are lots of people who still don’t take her seriously, because she smiles too much or likes big dangly earrings or paints her nails the color of her sports uniform. She tries not to let it bother her too much; when she was in junior high, a boy from a different school made fun of her for her nails, for wearing a scrunchie in her hair and having a sparkly water bottle, called her girly and childish.

She had wanted to be taken seriously. So she scrubbed the paint from her nails, got a new water bottle, tied her hair up with plain black elastics and did her best to be the very opposite of what she was Before. She wasn’t like other girls, she was better. Other girls wanted to be idols or movie stars (she used to dress up in her older sister’s clothes and learn the dances to her favorite songs, or practice her sad dramatic acting in the mirror), and she wanted to be a famous athlete.

But no one's gonna take you seriously if they don’t want to. There’s no point arguing with someone who doesn’t wanna listen; best thing you can do is let them run their mouth and then kick their asses later. So now she ignores her mom and watches tapes of old matches while she waits for her bright ass cherry red nail polish to dry, and layers the top coat on carefully, just to make it shines bright enough to blind someone if it catches in the right light. They might chip during the match this weekend, but it’s fine. She can always repaint them. 

And she wants Hajime to see her wearing the color she picked out for her; it’s stupid, and it’s something one of those dumb boys back in middle school or one of the gossipy girls in her homeroom might say is weird, but it’s just something she wants. She likes it when Hajime — notices. Little things that she does, for her. Because of her. Whatever. Maybe it’s embarrassing, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just something that she wants.

 

Tooru has a quiz in English the next day that she’s pretty she aces, and she still can’t pay attention in math but that’s fine, because she’s pretty sure she knows what’s going on. She thinks about the practice match again — the one that’s this afternoon, now — and thinks about whether or not she should sub Yahaba in as the setter for part of them game, to give her some time to gain experience before an actual tournament game. Tooru isn’t planning on letting anything happen to herself that will make her not be able to play, but it’s always best to be prepared.

(And the third years won’t be around forever, but she’s not ready to think about that thought all the way through, so she pushes it to the far back of her mind.)

During lunch, they sit in the courtyard. They claimed a spot under this cute little tree back in their first year, and they’ve spent so much time there that it’s wide open and waiting for them. Makki is talking about some video she watched last night, and Tooru leans back against the tree to listen. She brings a bite of milk bread to her mouth, and feels Hajime’s eyes catch on her nails.

“You used the red,” she says offhand, sounding a little surprised.

“Yeah,” Tooru agrees, putting her food down and spreading her fingers out to show off how they glint, “I said I needed to repaint them.”

A pause, “They look nice,” she says, and it’s soft and kind and makes Tooru flush just a bit, like some dumb kid with a crush.

“Thanks,” she says, instead of _I know,_ because she doesn’t wanna ruin the moment by getting swatted.

Hajime smiles at her, and focuses back on whatever dumb shit Hanamaki is saying now. Quietly, Hajime slides her hand across the grass, and tangles their fingers together.

Tooru can’t help a quick glance down: tan against pale against cherry red. Her heart beats just a little bit faster. Hajime smiles again, the corners of her mouth tilted up just right, like she _knows_ , and that only makes it worse.

 

Hajime makes her want to dress up; makes her want to look good, to look pretty, to impress her, like Hajime hasn’t already seen her at her absolute worse. Like she hasn’t sat through hours of her dumb play-pretend when they were kids, hasn’t listened to her belt her lungs out on the little karaoke machine she got for her eighth birthday back when she wanted to be an idol or a movie star or something else everyone wants to be.

It hasn’t always been this way — at least, not this bad. She and Hajime — because it’s always _Hajime_ when they’re alone — have always been close. No one thinks twice about two little girls holding hands at the park or laying with their legs all tangled up together or sleeping nearly on top of each other, squeezed onto the same little couch. It got less and less cute as they got older, Tooru supposes. You can’t play-pretend forever.

They used to play house, back when they were young enough to hold hands and sleep cuddled up and shit. Tooru had this set of fake plastic food she got handed down from her sister, and she used to pretend to cook it up, made it look all nice and fancy to give to her ‘big strong wife’ when she got home from work. Maybe she thought of it as ‘practice’ for when she’d have a husband, but she never did want to call Hajime her husband, even when they were playing. She didn’t want Hajime to be her husband, she just wanted her to be her Hajime. Maybe she wanted to cook for her, even though she had just barely learned how to pour her own milk for her cereal, and have Hajime eat it and like it and compliment her. She’s always liked compliments.

When Hajime ‘got home from work’, she would kiss Tooru on the cheek like they sometimes saw in the movies. It would make her face ‘go red like a stop light’ Hajime used to tease, no matter how many times they did it. It made her feel all light and happy, and she never did know why.

Eventually, her mom told her that she shouldn’t call Hajime her big strong wife anymore, so she changed to just Hajime, and eventually Iwa-chan. As they got older, Iwa-chan complained, and complained, and then didn’t complain anymore. She tacked bad words onto Tooru’s name like it was an art form, but sometimes she tacked pretty words onto it, too.

The first time Tooru tried to put makeup on, she was in her last year of junior high. She snuck some lipstick from her sister’s half of the bathroom, and practiced putting it on in the mirror. Hajime didn’t like makeup very much; she was tomboy-ish and sporty and kept her hair short and always had bandaids on her knees. Other girls whispered about it until she shut them all up one day, and now they don’t whisper about it anymore. The point is, Hajime didn’t really wear makeup. When Tooru showed up to school with her lips all sparkly, Hajime had raised her eyebrows at her, surprised.

“Are you wearing lipstick?” she had asked.

Tooru had walked out of the house confident that she looked good, but under her best friend’s gaze, she suddenly wasn’t so sure. Did Hajime think it was stupid? Did she look like she was trying too hard?

“Yeah,” she had said, trying to push down her doubts; she did her best to look perky and confident, like the girls on TV, “It’s my sister’s. Does it look good?”

There was a pause, where Hajime just _looked_ at her for a while. Tooru felt her eyes on her face, on her lips. She fought the urge to fidget.

“It’s… sparkly,” she said after a moment; Tooru couldn’t help but snort, and Hajime flushed just a bit, like she was just as embarrassed as Tooru was, “But, uh, yeah. It looks good.”

“Thank you,” Tooru had said, trying not to preen at the praise but probably failing.

“But you know, you don’t have to wear makeup to look good. You look good all the time.”

All soft and sincere, like Hajime only got when there was no one else around. Tooru had to look away so she didn’t like, pass out or something.

“Thank you,” she said again, quieter this time.

She hadn’t been actively trying to impress Hajime, when she put the lipstick on. She just wanted to try it, because a lot of girls at school were starting to wear makeup, and she had given up on her ‘better than other girls’ way of changing herself to get the respect of people who just weren’t going to give it to her, and her sister had a bunch of it lying around. But it felt nice.

The older they get, the more she feels like she just wants… to be good enough to have her attention, or something. She wants her eyes on her, and she wants her to like what she sees. She wants to wear the nail polish Hajime picks out for her and she wants Hajime to look at her lips like she wants to kiss them.

She just _wants_. Something that’s just out of her grasp. Something that she doesn’t know if she’s allowed to have. Sometimes, when Hajime looks at her lips or tucks Tooru’s hair behind her ear for her or laces their fingers together in that pretty tan-red-white contrast, Tooru thinks that maybe Hajime might want it, too.

 

There are times where Tooru feels like she just might be able to release whatever it is that’s been building up inside her. When it’s dark, and they’re in Hajime’s room, closed off from everything else and her mom can’t hear her and there’s nobody to want anything from her except Hajime, who’s already seen everything anyways, and who doesn’t expect her to be any form of perfect.

Right now is one of those times. The practice match had gone well; she’d decided to let Yahaba play as the setter for part of the game, and she’d done good. The second years worked well together; there was potential there. Tooru’s mom is out somewhere — left a note on the refrigerator — so Tooru walked the two houses down to climb through Hajime’s window instead of staying home alone all night, because who wants to be alone on a Friday night? Not Oikawa Tooru.

The TV in Hajime’s room is playing the old Godzilla movie - she still has the phone case Tooru got her for her birthday back in junior high - but it’s more background noise than anything. Hajime’s seen this movie so many times, and by default so has Tooru, that they could both probably reenact it if they wanted to. Like they used to, Hajime as the King Of The Monsters and Tooru as a hapless citizen. She never had liked being scared, but she pretended to yell as Hajime chased her around the park.

They’re sprawled out on the bed together, not quite cuddling, but also not quite _not_ cuddling. Tooru feels Hajime trace the bones of her hand, feels her fingers run over the smooth curve of her nails, rubbing at the polish.

“Hey, Hajime,” she finally says.

“Hm?” Hajime hums.

“I like it when you hold my hand.”

She doesn’t know why she says it; she regrets it almost immediately afterwards, but Hajime doesn’t stop what she’s doing. Tooru wonders is she can feel her pulse racing.

“I know,” she says, like it’s that simple.

For a moment, Tooru hopes. Thinks about all the times Hajime’s laced their fingers together, tucked her hair behind her ears, looked at her mouth or her hands or her thighs.

Godzilla roars faintly in the background. She can’t believe Hajime still has that stupid fucking phone case - they’re almost in college; they’re practically adults by now. Hajime still hasn’t stopped tracing her nails, so Tooru has to ask.

“Why do you like me in red so much?”

She feels Hajime shrug, but when she’s quiet for a moment too long, she turns to look a her. Iwaizumi Hajime - and she would swear it on her life, here - looks a little embarrassed. “You always wear the team colors,” she says, “I just thought, you know - red for the national uniform you’re gonna wear someday.”

Tooru doesn’t know what she was expecting, but somehow it wasn’t that. She flushes hard, she knows, because she can feel the heat rise in her cheeks.

“Jeez, I thought it was gonna be ‘cause it reminds you of roses or something. You’re so unromantic,” she complains, mainly so she doesn’t stutter or cry or something. She doesn’t know _why_ she would cry, but it’s always a possibility, once they get into real shit like this.

“I wasn’t _trying_ to be romantic,” Hajime says, voice rough in the way that means she’s embarrassed too, “But I… could try. If you wanted me to.”

Tooru feels her breath still in her throat. It’s about as much of an admission of anything as they’re gonna get right now. “Yeah?” she asks, just barely keeping her voice from cracking.

“Yeah. I mean, obviously I’m not very good at this - nice shit, but,” she stops, “I could try.”

Tooru wants to tell her that she’s very good at this nice shit, that the way she looks at her when she wears lipstick makes her want to float, or that the way she laughs when they score a point or win a game makes her feel like she could fly. But she doesn’t really know how to put it into words, in a way that anyone could understand, so she settles for “Does that mean you have to stop calling me mean names?”

Hajime looks like she definitely wants to call her some kind of mean name for a sec, but she huffs a laugh instead. Rolls her eyes, even though Tooru hasn’t even done anything stupid this time. All she did was sort of confess that she maybe feels _something_ romantic for her best friend — probably since they were in like, junior high or something — but that’s not stupid, that’s just. Scary. Weird. Impulsive. But not stupid.

“I guess it means I just have to call you Tooru now, huh.”

“You call me that anyway,” she squeaks.

“Not in public.”

“You can’t call me Tooru in public — I’ll die!” she kind of feels like she’ll die right now, if her heart doesn’t stop doing any more weird fluttering shit. She covers her face with her hands because she can _feel_ Hajime looking at her, and probably laughing at her, too.

“Tooru,” she says. And then again, softer, “Tooru.”

“What,” she finally asks, peering through a crack in her fingers.

“I like it when you wear the colors I pick for you.” she won’t look at her when she says it, biting at her lip the way Tooru knows she does when she’s nervous, and that somehow makes it better and worse at the same time.

“I like wearing them,” she admits. It feels so much heavier than it is, now that it’s off her chest. It’s so dumb, she’s so dumb, but if Hajime feels the same way then she guess it can’t be _that_ dumb.

She lets Hajime lace their fingers together again, carefully, like there’s something delicate that they’re balancing in the palms of their hands and Hajime doesn’t want to break it. Tooru doesn’t want to break it, either.

Tan on white on bright, cherry fucking red. It’s like poetry, or something, how she’s feeling. 

Thank god for chipping nails, she thinks somewhere. Turquoise and white wouldn’t have fit nearly this well.

 

**Author's Note:**

> king princess' whole discography was a huge inspiration for this whole thing, so if u haven't listened to her music I rly suggest it. might do more w this in the future?
> 
> anyway, comment to get me thru this last week before winter break!


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